Excluded from Political Task: NGO s’ Marginalized Participation in China’s Accurate Poverty Alleviation Project

The importance of NGO s’ participation in poverty alleviation has not only been well documented by extensive studies but also confirmed by rich experience both at the international and national levels. In China, the government officially opened its resources to NGO s in combating poverty in 2005, and NGO s are expected to work as important participants in China’s accurate poverty alleviation project, which is the largest anti-poverty campaign launched by the central government since the foundation of PRC. However, empirical data in the paper shows that NGO s’ participation in this ambitious project is at best very limited. Drawing from more than 30 interviews and some other sources of data, this paper argues that it is the nature of poverty alleviation in China, which can be defined as political task, that should account for the NGO’s limited participation. To be more specific, the excessive workload assumed by the local government deprives officials’ motivation to cooperate with NGO s, excluding NGO s out of the poverty alleviation project is also a rational behavior that can avoid risks for officials. Moreover, the over-supplied financial resource also makes the participation of NGO s unnecessary. This research adds more insights to the study on NGO s in China by arguing that the state-society interaction in China is still asymmetrical.

Differentiated Government Control for Conformity: Government-NGO Relations in China

This study examines differentiated government control over foundations in China. The distinct patterns of “Harmonious Society” and “obeying the law” in foundation mission statements indicate a two-dimensional control mechanism in which the government intends to seek functional conformity and behavioral conformity from foundations. Using the multinomial logistic regression method on the mission statement of 2,498 foundations from 2004 to 2013, this article finds that foundations’ funding-sufficiency leads to the government’s strong intention for functional conformity and weak intention for behavioral conformity. The article implies that the Chinese government has eased some institutional constraints on foundations for the purpose of seeking financial contributions from foundations. It suggests that the Chinese government can adapt to the socioeconomic conditions and calculate its relations with nongovernmental organizations.

The Public’s Supportive Attitude towards the Social Inclusion of Children with Special Needs: Theory and Experience

Using hierarchical linear models, this article examines how factors at individual and policy levels influence public attitudes towards the social inclusion of children with special needs based on data collected from 1,602 samples and second-hand data in five cities. It is found that individual and policy factors have varying impacts on relationship support, social support, and public support for the social inclusion of children with special needs: (1) individuals who once gave help to children with special needs express strong support; (2) government policies may have a crowding out effect, that is, greater intensity of child policies may lower public support for the social inclusion of children with special needs; (3) different policies may interfere with each other, that is, child policies and disability policies may have the opposite effects on people’s attitudes towards public support for the social inclusion of children with special needs.

The Ladder of Collaboration: Research on Joint Actions of Social Organizations against the COVID-19 Epidemic

Joint actions of social organizations have been frequently seen and continuously optimized since the outbreak of the COVID-19. This article is aimed to identify and explore the typical forms and development trends of collaborative networks of social organizations. Given the case studies on joint actions of social organizations, it builds an analysis framework based on actor-network theory (ANT). Research findings are as follows. First, there are, among social organizations in their joint actions against COVID-19, “loose”, “vertical”, “decentralized” and other typical forms of collaborative network, with “decentralized” collaboration showing quite a high degree of initiative. Second, “complex needs” and “political opportunities” that emerge in times of emergency response, “social entrepreneurship” and “bridging connective social capital” that accumulate in normal times, among other factors, have combined to drive vertical collaborative networks towards decentralization. The above three forms of collaboration, each with irreplaceable functions, together comprise an ecosystem of joint actions of social organizations. This article calls the landscape of dynamic practice of joint actions of social organizations a “ladder of collaboration”.